Full Summary ~ Libby is in the Thieves Guild. Diamond is in the Dark Brotherhood. The girls share a tenacious bond that is put to the test as Libby tries to expose an explosive truth that could change the hearts of those she loves. Meanwhile Diamond struggles to retain her faction's reputation as a rival assassination team beings to settle over Skyrim. Fractured by violence and power struggles and scarred by loss and betrayal, they will face the impossible choices about courage, allegiance, sacrifice, and love.
Fog clouds the city as the cold morning air mixes with the soon to be heat of the dawn. The deep blue darkness is lightening, evidence that the dawn was doing its best to push back the curtain of night. The city of Helgen pierces through the mist; its great brick walls and gates stand tall with Imperial Soldiers, including the proud General Tullius.
Had she'd thought twice of the security here, Diamond would've packed along extra weaponry and poisons. Not that she'd ever need them since they were obviously here for other and probably more important reasons.
"Dia," Libby calls. "come on."
Diamond follows Libby through a crevice in the wall that leads them behind the cabins and cottages of the city.
Libby is Diamond's closest friend, and exceptionally skilled in the art of stealth. She has thick black hair – and when not in a mess of curls – stays secures with a hairband and in her intricate trademark braid. She has almond-shaped hazel eyes, a thin nose and a heart-shaped face. Even with the Guild members not the complimenting type, she still has a generous does of vanity. Her full name was Libitania, which means death. Yet ironically she's in the Guild, and proclaimed the best thief at the age of nineteen.
The sun peeks over the horizon and Diamond does her best to stick close and mimic Libby's movements to stay hidden in the shadows. She had joined Libby on this mission with Libby since she had nothing else to do. And with her contracts with Nazir still finished, she couldn't think of anything better to do. It still intrigues her to this day how a member of the Thieves Guild is still somehow better than a member of the Dark Brotherhood. Of course, Libby is three years older than Diamond; and she's had more experience in the years that's passed. As she follows, Diamond can see a few members of the Thalmor.
The Thalmor are also referred to as High Elves, and are allied with the Imperials thanks to the singing of the White Gold Concorduct. They possess astound magic abilities and are often accused of capturing Nords who still worship Talos.
Diamond follows Libby as they sneak their way behind the houses. The townspeople seem to be watching something. Peeking out through an alleyway, Diamond sees carriages, Imperial soldiers in the driver's seat, taking loads of prisoners up to the execution block.
"Hey Libby, see that?" Dia points a dainty finger through a gathering of flowers.
Libby stops and peeks with her. "Yeah. Man, this can't be good. But come on."
Libby pats Diamond's shoulder and the two continue towards the house that Libby was assigned a burglary job for Vex. She needed to steal a golden horn without getting noticed, or killing anyone who lies there or she forfeits the payment.
With the townspeople busy, it wasn't that hard to sneak up the front porch. Still, they keep to their toggle crouch positions to remain unnoticed. Libby skillfully picks the lock and Dia hears the tumbler click.
"You want to join me?" She asks.
"Nah," Dia declines. "I'll just stay out here."
She removes her mystic mask, which usually has a glowing aura around it; and pulls back her hood, revealing her pale, sandy hair with pink dyed tips. She keeps it in her usual ponytail, pulled out of her face, revealing her a dark blue eyes; a dreaming, sleeping waiting color.
"I want to watch the executions." She says.
"You Dark Brotherhood members are seriously messed up." Libby says before she slips inside without as much as a wisp.
Diamond turns and rests her forearms on the banister of the porch of the house. The old wood creaks and the smell of fire smoke and herbs wafts against her nose. She has to do a double take, but she swears she sees Ulfric Stormcloak, the Jarl of Windhelm. General Tullius is talking to him about how a hero doesn't use the power of the Voice to murder his High King. Since he has a cloth covering his mouth, Ulfric can only reply with muffled grunts.
Diamond leans forward in anticipation, intertwining her fingers.
Inside, Libby doesn't bother to try and hide since most of the crowd is outside for the executions. She peeks her head inside the bedrooms and steps into the living area. Over on the far wall was a bookshelf with the item she needed. She walks up and takes the item, folding it over in her fingers to examine the horn.
As she tucks it carefully away in her pocket, she hears a creak in the wood and instantly whirls around to find nothing. Libby sighs and shrugs to examine the rest of the house. She browses through the bedroom trunks and finds a strongbox on the nightstand.
Only when she reenters the living room does something prickle her spine. She whirls around again, snatching her dagger and comes face-to-face with a young woman in a belted tunic.
Her hands a callus and her tunic has mud splashed along the hems. She's a farmer. The expression on her face says she recognizes Libby, or at least her armor. She opens her mouth to call for help.
Without hesitation, Libby punches her straight in the jaw. The woman collapses and Libby catches her in her arms. She lugs the body over to the bed, where she positions the legs and arms to simulate she's sleeping. But as Libby turns, a young girl stands behind her. Not waiting for her voice to sound, Libby pushes past her and barrels through the front door; nearly bumping into Diamond.
"What the heck -!" Diamond says, when a child's scream overpowers her.
"Stop her!" the child shrieks.
The girl's cry captures the attention of the prisoners and guards. Diamond swears under her breath and charges after Libby. The Co-Captain of the Imperial Army calls to the archers to ready their bows and some of the city's guards draw their swords.
With another one behind her, Libby sprints forward and pushes off her toes. Her hands grab the one guard by the shoulders as the other two come up behind her. She twists harshly so that his arms flail, slapping the other two, making them stagger. One pushes up and charges for Libby, and she flips over him, kicking its legs out from under him.
Libby spins the blades of her dagger out, snarling. One decides to strike, and Libby kicks her leg up, nailing its jaw, and when one goes to slash her with his sword, she grabs its wrist and flips it over her back.
One guard manages to grab Libby from behind while they charge towards her. Libby kicks both her legs to the sides and wrenches herself free, then spinning and kicking him in the head.
As two more guards charge for her, a wickedly sharp point pierces the side of their neck and ruptures their windpipe. They collapses. People scream and gasp as Diamond, wearing her mask, leaps in front of Libby with more daggers gripped between her fingers.
A great cry rose up around. Diamond loves this part. She draws her daggers and faces the guards. She and Libby stand back to back – Libby with her hood over her head – and face the guards.
"We'll give one last chance to surrender." The Imperial Co-Captain says.
In answer, Libby draws a sword.
"Suit yourself. Archers!"
Two of them aim arrows at Libby while Diamond glances over her shoulder while trying to eye the guards in front of her. The execution has halted as they watch the scene. Of course the prisoners could escape with the distraction, but they seem to be, interested.
Libby readies her sword as the archers pull back their strings. They each fire unison, but Libby either slices or blocks their arrows with her blade. Her blade whistles and chimes as the arrow tips ricochet off. Diamond smiles and barrels forward. She runs to the side, hurling dagger after dagger to keep the guards' attention. A couple glanced off their mail, another ricocheted off the flat edge of a blade, but one sank deep into the flesh of a soldier's thigh. He swears.
"Hey!" Diamond shouts. "Language, please. You're in the presence of a lady!"
Two more guards rush closer. Diamond dodges and rolls, her lithe body narrowly avoiding the swings of the guards' swords. Once she was on the far side of the town, near the marketplace, she turns and sprints, rolling past the two in waiting and shoots a dagger into another one's knee. Down on the other, clutching his wound, he only has time enough to look up and curse before Diamond stabs a dagger in his eye. She yanks it out as she passes, wincing at the eyeball lodged halfway up the slender blade.
Libby sprints past citizens who open a way for her, kicking, blocking and leaping past guards as she makes her way to the main gate. Dia loved this duel-battle; they're a well-oiled duel-fighting machine. Diamond follows Libby along the rooftops as she eyes Libby carefully.
When they reach the main gate, Diamond leaps into the air and spins, her hands a blur as dagger fly. Two guards crossed their arms to block their faces, but Diamond had anticipated such a basic defense. Sharp points dug into their legs, hands, and feet. Blood poured across the cobblestone.
"Let's move!" Libby calls.
Diamond blows the wounded soldiers a kiss and leaps down next to Libby, when suddenly, a roar echoes through the sky that somehow chills Diamond's spine. She doesn't scare easily, but something about that seemed, ominous. So raw and primal iced with fury. Diamond hears General Tullius yell, "What in the name of Oblivion is that?!"
"It's in the clouds!" shouts an Imperial Soldier.
Diamond and Libby's head whips around to see the glistening black length of a dragon land on the tower by the wall.
"Dragon!" shouts a Stormcloak, and the soldiers draw their swords.
The giant lizard shouts, but no fire comes, just a great pound of force that hurled toward the girls, knocking them to their knees. Citizens begin to panic. Knocking one another down, gentlemen half-dragging their women, they race past the girls. No longer concerned by them but by the bigger threat. Several citizens break free of the frightened, milling pack at the edge of the gates and sprint toward the safety of the towers.
The dragon surpasses the height of the walls of Helgen, its enormous wings nearly envelop the tower in ebony scales; and its eyes the deadliest shade of crimson. It's Diamond's first actual sighting of such a beast, and every instinct in her screams to run, but she can't look away. Besides, running means leaving Libby behind, and she won't do that.
"Libby." Diamond croaks.
Lashing its serpent-like tail, the dragon crushes two of the citizens running towards the gate, but its attention is on the horde of villagers and citizens in front of it. Horror trembles through Diamond as the creature opens its mouth and strafes the closest wagons and people with fire.
"Libby!" an ice bomb explodes somewhere in the pit of Diamond's stomach, set off by the sudden realization.
Diamond grips Libby by the strap of her uniform. The dragon roars, people wail, and fire snaps viciously. People stagger to the towers, burned and limping. Little remains of the citizens trapped in the dragon's fire.
General Tullius commands. "Guards, get the townspeople to safety!"
The beast lashes its tail, narrowly missing the general.
Libby grabs Diamond's elbow and jerks her to the side. "Come on!"
Libby runs down the remains of the cobblestone road, Dia follows after her.
"Where's your arrows?!" Dia asks.
Libby is a near master marksman, and her greatest weapon is a bow of any kind. No matter Imperial, Hunting or Dwarven, in her hands, it's lethal.
"Back at the Guild, dammit." Libby's breath hisses. "I didn't anticipate this!"
An Imperial soldier's body gets tossed in front of them, and Diamond clamps her hand over her mouth. His body is scored, steam fizzing off his skin with a snakelike hiss. There's another explosion and Dia instinctively throws herself to the ground. Libby stubbles off the cobblestone and onto the uneven space of grass.
"Libby!" Dia pulls at her as another wave of terrified citizens fight to get out of harm's way and back into the towers.
Dia takes an elbow to the chest from a husky man in a tattered cloak, and spins out of the way before the mule rider behind him can crash her beneath his steed's hooves. The ground shakes so much it's hard for Libby to find her footing, but she claws her way back over to the soldier and grabs' the man's arm and wrestles off a sheath of fifteen steel arrows and an Imperial bow.
People are burning, throwing themselves on the ground and beating at the flames, but the beast just keeps spewing fire at anything that moves. Sickened, Dia turns and hangs on to Libby. She wants to cry, to give voice to the rising shock and terror within her, but the Brotherhood taught her better than that. Losing her head in a crisis is a good way to become the crisis.
Instead, she loops her arm under Libby's and tug. "Get up. We can't stay here."
Libby pushes to her feet and slings the bow over her shoulder. Keeping one hand around Dia's wrist, they begin to run again. The closest tower is four yards away. There was a surge, like an explosion, sending a wave of air rushing over the village. The air swirled up toward the sky, in the same moment, it was sucked up into the blackness above.
While the sky was still black, there was a moment of unnerving silence, the crackling of the fire reducing on its sown. Disintegrating down, consuming itself until it was as harmless as a dying fire in a hearth. Dia's lungs sting from lack of oxygen, but they're not far from the tower. Sweat runs into her eyebrows. They reach the tower and slam the door shut, brisking past two standing Stormrcloaks, and two collapsed in splattered puddles of their own blood. Libby leans against the brick way, heaving and glistening with sweat.
"Where do we go?!" the panicked Stormcloak asks another.
Libby looks to Dia, who only gives an inconspicuous shake of her head. Libby pushes off the wall with her hip and trudges to the center. She looks up and turns in a complete circle.
"Up there." She points with a shaky finger. Dia can barely see her through the spots on her vision, but Libby touches her shoulder.
"Up through the tower." is all she manages to say.
Diamond pushes to her feet, staggering as the world takes an alarming spin. Libby helps her up, supporting her weight. Dia forces herself to stand, ignoring the churning feeling in her stomach as they ascend the stairs. A hissing catches Libby's attention.
"Get down!" she shouts, clutching her hand on Dia's shoulder and jerking them down flat against the stairs.
A man kneeling, trying to catch his breath on the first landing only gets a glimpse at them before the wall of the tower is smashed inward, letting in fresh yet dust-filled air. Libby tugs Dia back as the dragon breathes its fire inside the tower, roasting the man in mere seconds.
When it finally retracts, boudlers and debris have collapsed, blocking off their way further up the tower.
Libby swears under her breath.
"What do we do now?" Dia asks.
Libby sets her aside and pokes her head out through the hole of the tower. Black skeletal remains of trees had fallen and crashed through the roofs of houses, they weren't even a story high, but it was still high enough. Libby looks down.
"Dia," she pats her face. "See that inn on the other side?" she hauls Dia to her feet. Dia seems recovered enough to stand on her own; she takes a deep breath. "We need to jump through the roof!"
Dia looks to Libby with mass shock and confusion. "Are you insane?! We're too high!"
"Just go! I'll follow!" she shouts.
The idea of leaping out of a building onto the first floor of an inn, knowing there's a hole that leads right to scorched wood, makes Dia want to throw up. She offers Libby her hand.
"Here, she says. Libby raises an eyebrow at her hand, about to say that she doesn't need help, but Diamond adds, I just . . . can't do it unless someone drags me."
Libby takes her hand and they stand at the edge of the hole. They take a deep breath in unison.
"Now!"
They launch out of the tower. A weightless moment, and then their feet slam into solid ground and pain prickles through their shines. The jarring landing sends them sprawling on the floor, splinters under their cheek.
"Okay?" Dia says when she sees Libby sitting in the sand a few feet away, rubbing her ankle.
"Yeah." She replies. She pushes herself to her feet.
The entire inn is destroyed and piles of stone and wood swallow most of the rooms.
"Dia, this way!" Libby calls.
Dia sees a doorway that remained and follows as they run through it out back into the open. The co-Imperial captain is trying to call a terrified boy over through a small wall of fire.
"Haming, you need to get over here. Now!" Hadvar exclaims. The boys run over, his face caked in ash. "That a boy, you're doing great!"
Arrows whiz by the girls as remaining soldiers try and shoot the dragon down, but Libby's and Diamond's stomachs sink as the creature lands, vibrating the ground beneath them and causing both girls to lose their footfall. Smoke billows up, choking them, and the flames crawl steadily towards them.
Libby's lungs scream for air, her muscles shake with the need to run, and her skin feels dry and parched. A soldier runs out from behind a house. The dragon lands right behind him. Panic blazes through the girls, sharp and absolute. The dragon opens its mouth. The man is chewed alive by the fire and collapses to the ground.
"Gods . . . everyone get back!" Hadvar orders.
Libby and Diamond follow his orders and scramble behind a small wall of fire from the remains of a house.
"You two, follow me and stay close. We need to get out of here." Hadvar's voice is calm and quiet.
Dia looks to Libby. "Just go with it." She breathes, and loads an arrow in her bow.
"Gunnar, take care of the boy. I have to find General Tulluis and join the defense." Hadvar says.
"Gods guide you, Hadvar."
"You two," he looks to Libby and Diamond. "Follow me."
They follow him through what used to be the Square, and across a bridge when he yells. "Stay close to the wall!"
The girls duck as fast as they can. The dragon lands on the brick, its one talon of one wing nearly inches from Libby's nose. Her heart pounds in her chest as it opens its mouth and unleashes more fire. It takes out two more Imperials, then flaps its wings and flies off.
"Quickly!" Hadvar yells.
They follow him up a small set of steps and through another burned house until they reach the North gates. They're shut, so Hadvar makes a quick sharp turn and Dia nearly fumbles if it weren't for Libby's reflexes. A group of stationary soldiers shoot arrows and fireballs at the beast. One soldier collapsed on the floor applying pressure to a wound on his side.
"It's you and me girls! Stay close!"
The dragon flies over the village, roaring and taking nearly twenty arrows in its side. Imperials are all the girls see as they follow Hadvar. They come under an archway and they see a safe house still intact. The girl sigh in relief as their muscles begin to throb, their burns and scratches only becoming more noticeable. Black spots prickle the edges of their vision. Hadvar stops abruptly and the girls skid to a stop.
"Ralof! You damned traitor. Out of my way!"
It's the same Stormcloak whom Dia saw from the beginning of the execution.
"We're escaping Hadvar. You're not stopping us this time."
Hadvar snarls. "Fine. I hope that dragon takes you all to Sovngarde!"
Libby's mouth is puckered like she swallowed something sour. She loads an arrow and aims at the Stormcloak. It misses him, but he's off-balance when Libby runs up and delivers a blow right to his jaw. Then she takes his head and brings it to her bent knee, then she kicks him in the side. He falls to the ground unconscious. The other soldiers were about to scream then the dragon's roar overpowers them.
"Libby!" Diamond screams. Libby drops to the ground. But the flames tickle the hair on her neck.
"You two, come on! Into the Keep!" Hadvar says as the runs to the door of a one floor stone brick house with a turret rising form its intersection.
The dragon flies directly over them and its underbelly ripples in the light of the flames.
"With me girls! Let's go!"
Libby takes Dia's hand and they sprint on final way towards Hadvar. She sheaths his sword.
"We've got to get inside. Now!"
Dia glances over her shoulder and the dragon lands directly facing them. Cold slips over their skin and around their heart and into the pit of their stomach. The tremor begins in her hands and spreads its way to her shoulders.
"Come on!" Libby grabs her and shoves her shoulder into the door.
Dia follows inside, barely missing the shot of ravenous fire as it complete blocks out the door, casting everything momentarily in a red and orange blaze. Libby then harshly kicks the door shut.
They pull themselves into the Keep. They both collapse to the floor and try to breathe through the pain. Now that they are safe, the adrenaline that propelled the girls here is fading, their pains getting worse. A sob rises within Dia, desperate for release, and she chokes it back. She looks to Libby, her face blood-smeared, her body quivering.
Somehow Dia finds her strength to crawl to her. Her eyes lift to Libby's then Libby wraps her arms around Dia, and they catch their breath together.